Through the Past Darkly: Reflections on UFC 159

It was right after Rustam Khabilov won his fight via thumb injury at UFC 159 that color commentator Joe Rogan accidentally said what we were all thinking.

“Wow, this night is cursed,” Rogan uttered before immediately realizing his mistake.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” he added quickly. “Because that makes it official.”

From his employer’s perspective, it also makes it tough to get those last few pay-per-view buys. The last two bouts had ended strangely – before Khabilov’s TKO via Yancy Medeiros‘ gnarled thumb, there was Ovince St. Preux‘s technical decision win over Gian Villante following a late eye poke and a hasty decision from referee Kevin Mulhall – and there was still nearly a half-hour left on the FX broadcast before the real show started.

Probably because hers was one of the few fights that ended early without ending weirdly, Sara McMann got to see herself beating on Shiela Gaff for the second time in one hour. Nice for her, but not so great for keeping viewers locked on the broadcast.

Cursed might be too strong a word to describe UFC 159 as a whole, but it sure didn’t seem like the MMA gods blessed this card. Before the first punch was even thrown, we saw one fight scrapped entirely after Nick Catone‘s weight cut landed him in the hospital. Then there were the bone-wrenching injuries to Medeiros and headliner Jon Jones, the eye gouges to Villante and Alan Belcher, and, of course, the weird demonic voice that invaded our TVs and made us all wonder if we’d finally lost our minds.

By the time Jones winced through his post-fight interview with his left big toe looking like it was trying to hitch a ride out of Newark, N.J., we’d all been given plenty of fresh new material with which to populate our nightmares.

Some nights are just like that. Things get weird, eyeballs get raked, refs get impatient, bones get broken, and demonic voices get on TV. It’s tempting to come up with some totalizing theory to explain it all (we need new gloves! new refs! more calcium in our diets! less death metal in our iPods!), but maybe the best thing we can do is collect the shards of our shattered psyches and move on.

Yes, it got weird. But it could have been worse.

In a near-TKO due to toe, a gentle warning about matchmaking

Imagine that referee Keith Peterson hadn’t been so quick to save Chael Sonnen from the downpour of strikes he found himself trapped under in the final minute of the first round. Imagine he took a page from Josh Rosenthal in the Brock Lesnar-Shane Carwin fight and let things play out a little longer. Imagine Sonnen did just enough to look like he was still in the fight, rather than lying still and waiting to see whether Jones’ vision, like the T.rex in “Jurassic Park,” was based on movement. Imagine we reached the point where Jones’ toe became a fight-ending bummer instead of just a gruesome post-victory curiosity. What then?

That’s a question I hope the UFC brass is asking itself this week. I can see how matching Sonnen up against Jones seemed like a harmless way to make some quick cash. You let Sonnen hype the fight, and then Jones shows up on fight night and reminds everyone that he’s sort of a freakish prodigy at this MMA stuff, and we all go home happy and wealthy. But any time you look that far ahead in this sport, you invite disaster. Sonnen nearly won after doing nothing but losing for the better part of a round. The UFC nearly put one champ on the disabled list while crowning a new one who had just been thoroughly exposed. That would have been bad, as UFC president Dana White admitted, which should make him rethink the decision to make the fight in the first place.

Jones is the greatest light-heavyweight of our era. Before his career is over, assuming it isn’t significantly shortened by odd injuries like this one, he may be the greatest MMA fighter of all time. Sonnen? He’s a top-five middleweight with zero UFC wins at 205 pounds. There was no reason to make this fight, other than the fact that the UFC thought it could sell it to a bunch of people. I understand that that’s an important motivator to a business in search of a profit, but isn’t it also just a little too short-sighted for the one mammoth organization that is, whether it likes it or not, the guardian of an entire sport, not to mention the careers of all the greats? Considering the risks, let’s focus on fights that really matter rather than ones than can be just barely justified.

Even in victory, Bisping finds a way to remain a villain

His many detractors might not want to admit it, but Michael Bisping is a damn good fighter – much better than he gets credit for. Then again, maybe the reason he doesn’t get credit for it is due to his talent for making himself look bad even when he looks good.

All Bisping had to do was run out the clock in the final minute of his co-main-event fight with Alan Belcher. He does that and he goes home with a clear, dominant victory over a very tough opponent who practically had Bisping’s right hand stamped on his face by the end of the night. Instead, Bisping flings his fingers at Belcher’s eyeball so egregiously that you can actually see him scratching the man’s shoulder as his hand drifts away. Then, after he’s awarded a technical decision instead of a regular old obvious one, he makes it worse by showing up to the press conference and suggesting that Belcher used the eye poke as an excuse to end the fight early.

Whether Bisping really believes that or not, it’s not an accusation you get to make after raking an opponent’s eye so badly that it required stitches. That’s a foul, Mr. Bisping. You did something blatantly illegal that landed your opponent in the hospital, and it’s not the first time you’ve done it. And while it’s cool that you apologized in the cage right after it happened, it sort of negates any hint of sportsmanship if you then go to the presser and accuse the guy of milking it.

It’s one thing to play to a persona at weigh-ins and public appearances. Bisping’s made more money being the bad guy than he would have if he’d tried to play the role of the white knight, which just isn’t in him. At the same time, some day your career will be over and the money will all be spent. When that day comes, do you want to be a remembered as a good, if under-appreciated fighter? Or do you want to be known as a dirty, remorseless one? We might not always choose the enemies we have, but we do decide how much ammunition we give them.

After Roy Nelson once again managed to use his right hand like a medieval mace to dispatch Cheick Kongo in the first round, UFC President Dana White said he might like to see Nelson fight Mark Hunt next – if, that is, Hunt beats former UFC heavyweight champ Junior dos Santos at UFC 160. Nelson said he’s all for it, just as he’d be all for facing Daniel Cormier if he decides to remain at heavyweight, but I’m not sure how that works out for Hunt. You’re telling me he has to beat a former champion who’s still one of the best heavyweights on the planet (currently No. 2 in the USA TODAY Sports/MMAjunkie.com MMA rankings), and his reward for doing so will be a fight with Nelson (currently No. 9)? Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you supposed to move up the totem pole with a win?

It makes sense for Nelson, who keeps angling for a title shot even as he struggles to get past the guys at the top of the division. But then, a fight with Cormier would do just as well for him. If Hunt manages to beat dos Santos, however, it’s time to stop messing around and give the man his due. A win over JDS still equals title shot in my book.

‘Bam Bam’ a pleasant surprise in the UFC’s toughest division

Pat Healy has long been known as a grinder with more heart than sheer athletic talent. The uglier and messier the fight gets – and the longer it goes – the better off he is. If every professional bout was contested in the space between the bed and the wall in someone’s cramped studio apartment, he’d probably be undefeated. Still, while I expected him to make Jim Miller work for it over the course of three full rounds, I didn’t expect that Healy would come on so strong and nab a finish near the end. Could it be that he’s finally rounding the corner from game opponent to serious threat, and in the most talent-rich division the UFC has?

If Healy’s looking for a new target to help him capitalize on his win over Miller, he might want to set his sights on former Strikeforce lightweight champ Gilbert Melendez. After all, Melendez sort of snubbed him by pulling out of their planned title fight with a shoulder injury that, while perhaps totally legit, also seemed pretty convenient given the circumstances. Now that Melendez is coming off his split-decision loss to champ Benson Henderson, it’s the perfect time for Healy to go pick a fight and see if he can’t make his case for a leap up the ranks. If Healy could somehow talk Melendez and the UFC into a 20-minute first round, even better.

He didn’t win one of the UFC 159 bonus awards, but Bryan Caraway made them a little more worthwhile for those who did. According to White, Caraway argued the bonuses from $50,000 up to $65,000, and he did it mostly by refusing to shut up about it.

White said it was Caraway who initiated the locker room negotiation, “and he just kept talking.”

“And I said, ‘What are you, a f—ing union representative?'” White said. “It was actually funny. We had a good time in the locker room.”

Maybe there’s a couple lessons here for UFC fighters. One is that it pays – literally – to have someone like Caraway looking out for your collective interests. Jokes about union representatives aside, here’s an example of why that’s not such a bad idea. Pat Healy is probably not the type to try to haggle over bonus money with the boss. But because he had the good fortune to be on the same card as someone who would, Healy now has an extra $30,000 in his pocket between the two separate bonuses he won. That makes a major financial difference for all the non-superstars in the ranks.

Lesson No. 2 is one that all the managers out there might want to note. How do you get White to agree to your terms? Apparently you just keep talking and talking and talking. You win the way erosion wins: one grain of sand at a time. Maybe that becomes your greatest negotiating weakness once you’re a very rich man with more money than patience. I wouldn’t know. What I do know is that the next time I need to buy a car, I’m bringing Caraway to the dealership with me. I’ll even buy him lunch afterward, which is the least Healy could do for him now.

As the UFC 189 tour made its last stop in Dublin, featherweight champ Jose Aldo was met with a torrent of abuse from the Irish fans. It might have been unpleasant, but it might also have been just what he needed.